Money

“It’s scary to think about my mother with no money to feed us or buy our clothes”: Judy Blume, It’s Not the End of the World (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Bradbury Press, 1972).

John controlled the family’s finances and doled out cash: Box 34 of the Judy Blume Papers at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Accessed April 28, 2022.

“The reason that divorce became the politicizing moment”: SK to RB, October 14, 2022.

“They were really sort of economically displaced”: Ibid., October 14, 2022.

“If there is any one thing that makes a feminist”: Betty Friedan, It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women’s Movement (New York: Norton, 1976), p. 414.

“Women should be educated to do the work society rewards”: Ibid., p. 409.

“Our movement to liberate women and men from these polarized, unequal sex roles”: Ibid., p. 414.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get married,” she says: Judy Blume, It’s Not the End of the World, p. 1.

“My mother has no money that I know of”: Ibid., p. 76.

“Daddy can afford to”: Ibid., p. 153.

“self-help reading, a guide for those troubled by divorce”: Lael Scott, “Divorce Juvenile-Style,” New York Times, September 3, 1972.

about a mother who is so worried about her son’s meager appetite: Box 116 of the Judy Blume Papers at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Accessed April 28, 2022.

It was a decision he’d eventually come to regret: Pat Scales, “Natural Born Editor,” School Library Journal, May 2001, pp. 50–53.

who occasionally ate on the floor: Weidt, Presenting Judy Blume, p. 96.

“Oh no! My angel! My precious little baby!”: Judy Blume, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing (New York: Dutton Books, 1972). I worked from the 2007 reprint from Puffin Books, p. 112.

“Someday she’ll grow up and go to school”: Judy Blume, Superfudge (New York: Dutton Books, 1980). I worked from the 2007 reprint from Puffin Books, p. 28.

Chapter Eight

Mothers

“One thing I’m sure of is I don’t want to spend my life cleaning some house like Ma”: Judy Blume, Deenie (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Bradbury Press, 1973). I worked from the 2014 reprint published by Simon & Schuster, p. 44.

“This ‘flare-up,’ as the doctors called it”: Judy Blume, Letters to Judy, p. 74.

“I never want to see Boston again”: Lee, Judy Blume’s Story, p. 55.

“The thing that really scares me is I’m not sure I want to be a model”: Judy Blume, Deenie, p. 4.

“Deenie’s the beauty, Helen’s the brain”: Ibid., p. 3.

“Nobody expects much from my schoolwork”: Ibid., p. 43.

“they make your feet spread so your regular shoes don’t fit”: Ibid., p. 5.

“She’s really fussy about what I eat”: Ibid., p. 15.

“Most times I don’t even think about the way I look”: Ibid., p. 14.

“This woman was falling apart”: Weidt, Presenting Judy Blume, p. 103.

“She was very open about her problem”: Judy Blume, Letters to Judy, p. 81.

“I felt like the world’s biggest jerk”: Judy Blume, Deenie, p. 149.

“She’s a nice kid,” Deenie says: Ibid., p. 175.

“I always feel funny when I pass her house”: Ibid., p. 16.

“I wonder if she thinks of herself as a handicapped person”: Ibid., p. 178.

“You’re not telling us Deenie’s going to be deformed”: Ibid., p. 63.

“I expected Daddy to explain everything on the way home”: Ibid., p. 64.

“I had to fight to keep from crying”: Ibid., p. 110.

whose kids are grown up and “has nothing better to do”: Ibid., p. 48.

doing each other’s hair like schoolgirls: Ibid., p. 145.

“I used to tell myself it didn’t matter if I wasn’t pretty”: Ibid., p. 173.

“I wanted better for you,” she tells them: Ibid., p. 174.

“Ma says pigeons are dirty birds with lots of germs”: Ibid., p. 141.

“I looked out the window and no pigeons were on the ledge”: Ibid., p. 152.

Judy was quite proud of them, according to Dick Jackson: Box 115 of the Judy Blume Papers at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Accessed April 28, 2022.

Chapter Nine

Masturbation

“I rubbed and rubbed until I got that good feeling”: Judy Blume, Deenie (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Bradbury Press, 1973), p. 169.

“I have this special place and when I rub it I get a very nice feeling”: Ibid., pp. 67–68.

“If there were a Professional Masturbators League”: Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (New York: Hachette, 2009), p. 26.

“The first time I slid on my back to the bottom of the tub”: Melissa Febos, Girlhood (New York: Bloomsbury, 2021), p. 23.